


For Whom Tears are Spent

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [10]
Category: River's Edge (1986)
Genre: BBW, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Overweight, Secrets, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Tears, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22267987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: I've been dating a boy named Matt for months now. He often seems troubled by something that I can't get him to talk about. When I discover what has been bothering him I'm taken off-guard but I think I can help him out a little.
Relationships: Matt & Tim (River's Edge), Matt (River's Edge)/Me, Matt/Clarissa (River's Edge)
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 5





	For Whom Tears are Spent

**Author's Note:**

> This could probably be a lot better. :/

There is always this cloud that hangs around Matt. It is this mixture of his reputation and the actual event that happened to him a few years ago. You can't really escape something like that after it has just happened. Maybe, as time goes by, but not at the start when its fresh in everyone's mind. Wherever he went, I guess, they would point at him and mention the fact that he'd been Samson "John" Tollet's friend and that he'd been one of the few teenagers to see John's murdered girlfriend.

By the time I met Matt the reputation had faded and what remained mostly was the atmosphere around him alone; that kind of brooding and melancholy air. Or maybe he had always had that. His personality seemed the type that could never be completely free of sorrow but that would keep it hidden away somewhere deep inside of his soul like some people keep old photographs hidden away inside their wallet.

I liked Matt despite of that little rain cloud. Maybe I liked him all the more because of it. You have to be aware of the whole sorrowful state of the world to carry around a sadness wherever you went. Graham Greene once wrote:

"Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance."

If Matt was ever completely ignorant it was a long time ago.

I like how my tall and handsome lad never lets his attractiveness make him proud or smug too. He has never ever been ashamed to be seen with a butterball like me even if sometimes people look at us like we are an alien sight. I saw his old girlfriend too once. We were heading out of the movies once when she passed by. Matt said hello and she stopped and returned it. He introduced me, they exchanged some brief small talk, primarily a short synopsis of their current lives and then she walked away. 

While Clarissa was thin, I am the complete opposite. Still Matt always treats me like any model on the cover of a magazine. He'll even actually let me sit on his knee sometimes and embrace me from behind like I don't weigh more than Clarissa did or any other girl he's ever been with. 

Matt is the only man that I've been with. He was my first and as considerate a lover as I could ever hope for. He didn't make it embarrassing or hurt more than it could have. After we moved in together and started to _literally_ sleep together every single night, something happened, however, which struck me as odd and made me kind of curious about his past.

I awoke one night to find him staring at me.

"What is it?" I had asked, feeling as if he was upset for some reason.

"Nothing," he had replied. "I'm just glad that when people sleep they do it with their eyes shut."

It was such a strange thing to say and I always remembered it even if I didn't know what on God's green earth he was talking about.

It didn't take me too long to find out what.

For the first time, today, he took me home to meet his family. Poor Matt was just about as nervous as I was which was strange because he knew them, whereas to me they were only strangers that were about to judge me on what quality of girlfriend I made.

He stood in front of the mirror fixing the tie to his suit.

"Ahhhh!" he finally said in frustration. "I haven't worn one of these since my graduation."

"You look good in a suit," I had commented. 

He had stopped to stare at himself then in the reflection and I could see his face in it. Funny how everything looks kind of _wrong_ in a mirror. The faces of those we love are the same yet somehow so different. Yet, it occurred to me in that moment, that that was how my man always saw himself. If he were to see the Matt I saw, he wouldn't be used to him but would think _it_ was the mistake.

I watched as that other Matt in the mirror laughed. "They always make me think of funerals; I _hate_ those."

There was an unreadable expression on his face then. Unreadable because it seemed so blank. I rose from the edge of the bed and stood behind him, hugging him tightly, preventing his hand from returning to his tie. I saw that familiar other me in the mirror. She pressed her cheek into the side of his back and offered him a kind smile, the type I know he likes because he's told me a few times on bad days that they never fail in cheering him up.

I watched as that other Matt, in return, exchanged its apathy for a smile. He took my hand and brought it to his lips. They were soft against my skin and I rubbed my jaw against his back.

"One more thing," he told me, still clutching his hand. 

"What's that?"

"My little brother can be a real little shit sometimes."

* * *

I liked Matt's family but I spent supper with them in uneasy bits of conversation. It was a stilted and sad affair consisting of references to the weather, Matt's current job and how his siblings were doing at school. His sister seemed to be doing well but Tim, the turd of a brother, seemed to be having some trouble. Matt's mom, Madeleine, didn't seem to be in a hurry to discuss herself. Matt whispered to me when she went out of the room that she must have been on the verge of breaking up with her latest male friend. 

Overhearing this, Tim piped up with a "Yeah. Good riddance too. The fucking creep wouldn't let me play my rap albums."

"Watch your language!" the teenager's mom chastised her younger son when she came back into the room.

Eating over at other people's houses is always tricky for me. I remember when my sister and I would have to eat at one of my own mom's friend's houses. It was always a home cooked meal and I was always expected to eat everything on my plate or what was left of any given meal on the table. It was almost like it was an insult to the chef if the fat girl didn't want to eat every single crumb. So even if it wasn't a type of food I enjoyed, I'd be expected to polish it all off. I guess, it also saved space in their fridges.

I was torn what to do then. I didn't want to offend Matt's mother if I didn't eat a lot but still I could remember the way that they had looked at me when I had first stepped through the door. Almost like it was a joke that Matt had brought me home and was passing me off as his girlfriend. As if he were trying to fool them or something. When he kissed me and time progressed I think they started to know that he was being honest. Especially when he let me sit on his knee again on the sofa and held me in that way that always brings me comfort, his stubbly chin resting on my shoulder.

The thought of stuffing my face in front of them was humiliating even if it is just to reassure my lover's mother that she could cook well. I may be a big girl but I've always been a very polite and discreet eater. Which makes Matt laugh sometimes given the way in which I happily and passionately consume him in our private and intimate moments.

As I ate, I felt them watching me, including Matt's beloved little sister. She had also probably been wondering what her brother saw in his new girlfriend. Either that or she didn't want to end up like me. Her plate remained stacked with potatoes, meat and a bun for a very long time. It looked like it wouldn't be touched and I prayed I wouldn't be offered it too.

"So Erin," Madeleine asked. "How'd you two meet?"

I saw Matt roll his eyes but I placed my hand gently on his knee under the table.

"Matt came into the donut store where I work."

I thought Tim snickered as he assumed his brain had finally figured out just how I gotten to so be so fat.

My lover glared at his younger brother and added to my statement, "She was the sweetest thing there so I took her out instead."

I leaned towards him, an instinctive motion. I think it embarrassed Tim and his mom but his sister looked somewhat touched enough to attempt a bite of her roast beef.

"I saw Layne's out," Tim said starting to cut his own piece of beef and any bit of ease that had fallen over the table was lost. "He said he's not angry with me but he's still mad as hell at you, Matt. I wouldn't want to bump into him if I were you."

Matt looked about ready to pummel him and I looked at him questioningly. When he turned to look at me there was fear in his deep brown eyes but another emotion as well. I recognized it as shame.

"You mean you _never_ told her?" my boyfriend's younger brother said with a laugh far more cynical than a boy his age should really give.

"Timothy!" Madeleine said reprovingly. "Hold your tongue!"

As if this urged Tim forward, the boy said quickly: "Layne was Matt's best friend along with a boy named John. John killed his girl and showed everybody. Matt was the fink. John died and Layne was devastated. My advice: don't tell him your secrets, Erin. Now can I please have the salt? Mom's cooking sucks."

* * *

Right now we're in Matt's old bedroom, he is giving me a much better detailed account of what he's been keeping from me all this time. We're in bed, having foregone any act of intimacy because my man needs to talk more than anything else. His naked shoulders glow almost white in the moonlight and his long brown hair falls across his pillow as he lies on his side. While he looks at me occassionally, for the most part, he looks to the side at the similarly white pillowcase as if his memories are projected on to it inside of his mind. I listen quietly as he tells me about Layne, John, Clarissa and a man named Feck, who owned a sex doll he called Ellie.

And about Jamie too.

It seems so strange that she's the starring player but she doesn't do a single thing in the story other than be dead.

"We just couldn't feel anything," he says. "It's not like we didn't know what to feel...it's that we just couldn't. We knew Jamie but that was it. She was just somebody we knew."

I reach out a chubby hand and touch the soft luminescent curve where shoulder becomes arm.

"I learned the word apathy when I was a teenager," I say. "I was proud to learn such an _adult_ word. Afterwards, I wished I never had because that's what I started to feel often: nothing. Then I realized it was because I was in so much pain it was impossible for me to feel anything. It was my mind's way of dealing with it all. That was when I started to cut myself to feel _something_."

Matt looks at me sympathetically. He knows about my battle with self-harm and he has always been kind about it. He rubs my shoulder now and I lean my head towards his hand. "What matters is that you did the right thing even though you couldn't feel," I try to comfort. "Not many people would be strong enough to do that even."

Lowering his gaze before raising it to meet mine again, Matt starts falteringly. "The thing that keeps bothering me is Layne when he found John dead...there John was, a murderer, but Layne was almost destroyed by his death, you know? He could easily show the emotion we all should have been offering to Jamie...she hadn't hurt anybody but there Layne was crying and having a fit over her killer. It seemed like a sin. But it also was a relief to see somebody feeling something. Does that make sense, Erin?"

Knowing all too well the pain of feeling something and then the reflection of not being able to, I nod and move my hand to Matt's cheek. We move closer to one another in unison our lips meeting as we start to make love after all. Matt moving on top and me beneath him: the position I always prefer.

After it is over and Matt has fallen asleep, his head on my chest, his breathing slow and thankfully peaceful, I remember seeing Matt in the mirror in that backwards world. I wonder if in there maybe things make more sense. Maybe if some land exited behind its silver surface we would know what was going on and things would be more clearer. Maybe we could finally be able to feel when we needed to.

And crying would be an action spent on whom it should be.

Or maybe it's all just a lie anyway and God, if He could, would tell us that we all deserve sympathy, every one of His lost children, and no tear that falls from a grieving or caring eye is, in truth, ever wasted.

I kiss Matt's hair, hold him closer and try to fall asleep, listening to his breaths and feeling them next to my heart.


End file.
